Biography

Patrick D. Lyons, Ph.D., RPA is Director of the Arizona State Museum (ASM) and Associate Professor in the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Dr. Lyons earned his BA (1991) and MA (1992) in anthropology (specializing in archaeology) at the University of Illinois, Chicago. In 2001, he received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Arizona, where he had been an Emil W. Haury Graduate Fellow. Dr. Lyons's research focuses on ancient migrations in the US Southwest, the use of ceramics in understanding the lives of ancient peoples, the use of tribal oral traditions in archaeological studies, and the archaeology, history, ethnography, and ethnohistory of the Hopi people. He has primarily conducted fieldwork in the ancestral Hopi settlements of the Homol'ovi area, near present-day Winslow, Arizona, and in the San Pedro Valley of southeastern Arizona.

He is the author of Ancestral Hopi Migrations, published in 2003 by the University of Arizona Press, and co-editor of Migrants and Mounds: Classic Period Archaeology of the Lower San Pedro Valley, published in 2012 by Archaeology Southwest. His work has also appeared in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including American Antiquity, Heritage Management, Journal of the Southwest, Kiva, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, as well as in numerous edited scholarly volumes. A past Chair of the Governor's Archaeology Advisory Commission and the Society for American Archaeology's Committee on Museums, Collections, and Curation, Dr. Lyons recently was appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to the NAGPRA Review Committee, which oversees museum and state and federal agency compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Degrees

Ph.D. Anthropology

University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, United States

Winslow Orange Ware and the Ancestral Hopi Migration Horizon

M.A. Anthropology

University of Illinois, Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States

B.A. Anthropology

University of Illinois, Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States

Work Experience

Director, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona (2013 - Ongoing)

Licensure & Certification

Related Links

Interests

Teaching

Late prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology of the southwestern US and northwestern Mexico; Hopi ethnography, history and ethnohistory; ceramic decorative and technological style; ceramic compositional analysis; migration; diaspora; identity; the use of oral tradition in archaeological research; museum collections management; repatriation

Research

Late prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology of the southwestern US and northwestern Mexico; Hopi ethnography, history and ethnohistory; ceramic decorative and technological style; ceramic compositional analysis; museum-collections-based research; migration; diaspora; identity; the use of oral tradition in archaeological research

Lyons, P. D., & Clark, J. J. (2012). A Community of Practice in Diaspora: The Rise and Demise of Roosevelt Red Ware. In Potters and Communities of Practice: Glaze Paint and Polychrome Pottery in the American Southwest A.D. 1250 – 1700(pp 19-33). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Lyons, P. D., Clark, J. J., & Hill, J. B. (2011). Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape of the Lower San Pedro Valley. In Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest(pp 175-196). Boulder: University Press of Colorado.